Why They Kill

My goal in life has always been to be a behind the scenes analyst of chemical evidence found at crime scenes. aka a Forensic Scientist specifically Forensic Chemist. In this career endeavor I have found myself looking at aspects of crime that can not be explored by Chemistry. I started off by taking a class called Criminal and Deviant Behavior. This was extremely interesting, so I decided with only 4 required hours in my last semester of senior year, to delve farther into the criminal mind.

With the help of Dr. Ginocchio at Wofford College, I developed an independent study class called Criminal Mind. I hope that I will learn why some people commit heinous crimes such as serial killers, and mass murders.

My first week consisted of contacting a reference librarian and using all the Libraries reference books to find preliminary information. I have read a few journal articles, but mainly got statistical and profiling type information on such killers.

I just started reading the book 'Why They Kill' by Richard Rhodes. I have read the first four chapters and am amazed by how experiences at such a young age really can shape people.

I also found it very interesting that Athens, a person who is a criminologist that Rhodes is writing about, believes that you can't really study criminology until you have experienced it. Experienced crime, for instance being abused or seeing someone else actually commit crimes. Not having any expertise who am I to say what I think... but here goes. I think I agree with him. How can you make generalization about people who commit these crimes and have so many statistics but never actually know who you are studying? For instance how can you talk about depression with conviction without experiencing it yourself OR experiencing the presence of someone who was depressed? Maybe you can speak about things you have not experienced, but it seems lacking to me. Just like I can talk passionately about watching someone with cancer die slowly, because I have seen it first hand... but I don't have the experience to talk passionately about rape. I do not know anyone personally with that experience and it has not happened to me.

So maybe the question is, why am I talking about Serial Killers and mass murders? I simply want to learn something about the criminals that I may be investigating Chemically one day. I have no intention on speaking of them professionally or as an expert, but I believe gaining knowledge can never be harmful.

Now that I am off my pedestal, I hope that anyone who reads this blog will possibly learn something, or even pick up an interesting book instead of watching a potential pointless TV show.